"Star Wars Rebels" will begin its regular run on Disney XD on Monday, but later this month, the first episode of the animated series will air on ABC with a special bonus for fans: a cameo from Darth Vader himself.

Whatever Rivers Cuomo does in Weezer will always be held up against the band's first two albums, the self-titled "blue album" (1994) and "Pinkerton" (1996), and inevitably found wanting. Cuomo acknowledges as much on "Back to the Shack," the first...

R2-D2 rests on the floor inside a dimly lit storeroom next to the Ark of the Covenant from "Raiders of the Lost Ark." An array of light sabers fills an entire shelf, enough to rival even the most well-prepared Jedi armory. Bizarre alien masks, including a...

Risks of being uninsured
Florida's refusal to expand Medicaid is a moral failure. Now that a patient is being treated for Ebola in the U.S., in a Texas hospital, it's apparent that it also could become a major public-health and financial failure....

A proposed national memorial to the thousands of African Americans who fought in the American Revolution won crucial federal approval Sept. 11, a key step for a project that began 30 years ago with a Plainville woman's struggle to join the Daughters of the American Revolution.
By a unanimous vote, the Senate passed a resolution designating a site on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the National Liberty Memorial. The measure had already won approval in the House of Representatives. President...

To the editor: The Republican National Committee denounces the College Board's AP United States history guidelines for their alleged "radically revisionist view of American history." ("New U.S. history curriculum sparks education battle of 2014," Oct. 1)
In 1994, Republicans launched a similarly deceptive media assault on federally funded national history standards shortly before that year's midterm elections. Just as it is doing today, the right charged that liberal academics would rather teach...

To improve the Advanced Placement class for U.S. history, some of the best and brightest history scholars in the country worked for six years on a new curriculum.
The idea was to replace traditional memorization with more emphasis on critical thinking and some key periods in American history, such as the 1980s.
It all seemed innocuous enough. Maybe even a tad dry.
Then it exploded.
Just weeks before the school year began, the change sparked a political feud over how children should be taught about...

Born and raised here, a true "Son of Baltimore," I have witnessed the evolution and controversy of the "O!" sung during "The Star-Spangled Banner" since its origins in the cheap seats of Memorial Stadium some 30-plus years ago ("Stop desecrating the anthem," Sept. 18). To those who accuse us of disrespect and desecration, I have the following to say.
My family, like many, came to the docks of Locust Point poor and hopeful and never left — the immigrant working-class backbone of a young country....

Fifty years ago, Jack Weinberg was the first to be arrested in an unprecedented student protest over free speech restrictions on the UC Berkeley campus. Thousands of demonstrators surrounded the police car in which Weinberg was detained for 32 hours. Subsequent protests went on for months.
While UC authorities had hoped for a quick return to order, a seminal youth rebellion — the Free Speech Movement — was born on Sproul Plaza instead. Historians say its national influence persists through...

Carol A. MacPhail, who had been an administrator and art teacher at Friends School and Bryn Mawr School, died Wednesday of breast cancer at her Lutherville home. She was 71.
The daughter of Norbert Albert Witt, who had been president of Noxell, and Cecile R. Porter Witt, a homemaker, the former Carol Ann Witt was born in Detroit. She spent her early years in Evanston, Ill., and Greenwich, Conn., before moving to Homeland in 1954 with her family.
She was a 1961 graduate of Friends School and earned a...